


if she likes, i'll tell her lies

by evewithanapple



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-14 23:48:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21244019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evewithanapple/pseuds/evewithanapple
Summary: Donna learns to say what people want to hear.





	if she likes, i'll tell her lies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kiertorata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiertorata/gifts).

She should be ashamed of herself; she knows it. She _is_ ashamed of herself, but not enough to change, not enough to stop. It’s just a subtle churning in her stomach when she lies awake at night, a hot stab in her ribcage when she takes Maddy’s hand, an ache in her teeth (“_you’re grinding them again, honey, maybe we should look into getting a night guard_” her dad says while she eats breakfast and winces with every bite) when she smiles. These feelings mean something, she knows: it’s like touching a hot stove and getting burned, a warning to _not do this_. But it doesn’t hurt enough to make her stop.

She’s not careful anymore, is the thing. Once-upon-a-time Donna would have backed away from warnings like these, but now-Donna won’t. She’s been turning into someone else these past few months, someone she barely recognizes, someone who doesn’t listen to warnings, someone who -

(. . ._ Laura_?)

\- who seeks this kind of pain out. Someone who even seems to_ like_ it. To like being punished. Because that's the thing: even though it feels bad, even though she's losing sleep over it, even though she knows what she's doing is wrong - _she still likes it_.

* * *

Her parents love Maddy - but oh, of course they do. What’s not to like? Maddy is the kind of girl every parent wants their daughter to be friends with: sweet, considerate, polite. Maddy is the kind of girl Donna used to be, the kind she isn’t anymore. And of course, her parents loved Laura, and they miss Laura - so why not embrace Maddy, who looks so much like her?

It’s why they’re all here, after all.

Maddy almost never brings it up - is too _polite _to bring it up. They talk about something else, anything else. About Gersten’s latest piano recital, how she’s driving Donna crazy by playing “Prelude in G Minor” at all hours of the day and night. About how Maddy’s thinking of taking on a part-time job at Horne’s Department Store, a suggestion that turns Donna’s stomach for reasons she can’t identify. About music, in general - Maddy left almost all of her records behind in Missoula, and they seem to be the one thing she misses above all else (above her parents, Donna notices; she never mentions them) so one day they bike down to the second-hand store and buy a bunch of new ones. Maddy’s taste is frozen somewhere in the late 1950s, so it’s not hard to find stuff she likes. There’s a lot of country.

“I mean, you know,” she says with an apologetic smile, “it’s Montana. This is basically all they play on the radio, so . . .” Donna has an impulse, Audrey-like, to ask why Maddy buys this music if she could hear it for free on the radio. She bites it back. 

They listen to the records in the guest bedroom of the Palmers’ house, where Maddy is staying - Donna has to share her room with Harriet, and her whole house is still ringing with Rachmaninoff. The Palmer house is much quieter. Leland is always out somewhere, probably at the Great Northern; and Sarah naps a lot. “So I try not to disturb her,” Maddy tells Donna as they tiptoe down the upstairs hallway. “She’s going through a lot, you know?”

Donna knows.

The guest bedroom is pink and green and floral, just like the rest of the house. The carpet was shag, once, but it’s been worn down since then, and lying on it feels basically the same as lying on bare hardwood. So they take the bed, Maddy on the side closer to the record player so that she can reach over and drop the needle. They lie on their backs, staring at the ceiling as the sound of Patsy Cline fills the room. Donna prefers it to Rachmaninoff, but that’s not saying much.

Maddy drags her hands through her hair. “Hey, Donna? Have you ever smoked pot?”

Donna turns her head on the pillow to look at her. Maddy’s still looking at the ceiling. “No-oooo,” she says slowly. Then, because she doesn’t want to seem babyish, she adds, “A guy in my algebra class offered to sell me some, once. But I turned him down. He wanted ten dollars.”

Maddy makes a _mmm-hmm_ noise. “Oh, that’s way too much.” She rolls over on her side, propped up on one elbow. “It’s everywhere at my school back home. You don’t even have to pay for it. People just trade.”

“Laura smoked,” Donna says. “Sometimes.” She remembers the smell, how afraid she was that it would stick to her clothes after she and Laura spent the afternoon together. It never did, as far as she knows - at least, her parents never mentioned it - but she was still always scared. That was the old Donna all over: scared of everything. Not now, though. Not here. “It made her . . . I don’t know, kind of sleepy. Calm.”

“A girl I went to school with told me - “ Maddy hesitates, putting one hand over her mouth to smother a nervous giggle. “She told me it made her _horny_.” That last word is delivered almost in a whisper, and she buries her face in the pillow as her cheeks turn pink. “So she always smoked up with her boyfriend.” This last comes out muffled by the pillow; Donna has to strain to make it out.

Donna giggles as well. It seems like the thing to do. “Did she not like her boyfriend?”

Maddy laughs louder, and buries her face further into the pillow. Donna laughs too. This is what they’re supposed to be doing, isn’t it? Girl talk. They’re having fun.

“I don’t know!” she says as she resurfaces. “I think she told me so I could . . . you know. If I wanted to. But I never did.”

Donna dimly remembers a smoky bar, a mouth on her breasts. It all feels like something that happened in a dream, or maybe when she was high. A lot of her memories of Laura have taken on that quality since she died - like she’s watching the scenes play out through a fog.

She knows what Maddy’s going to ask before she ever says it. “Did you . . . ?” She’s sitting up against the headboard now. “I mean - ever?”

Donna rubs a finger across her lower lip. “No,” she says. “Not ever.” Mike had wanted it; Mike had pushed. But she’d said no. His hands had been too big, too painfully tight on her breasts. She doesn’t miss him.

Maddy’s voice drops several decibels. “But did you ever _want _to?”

_I wanted everything_, Donna thinks but doesn’t say. Laura had smelled like smoke, sometimes; other times, she’d smelled like the Sweet Honesty perfume she always got from Horne’s. When they were too young to have their own pocket money, she’d shoplifted it. It smelled like roses and cedar, and_ Laura_. Like whoever made the perfume had made it just for her, knowing her and what she’d want. It had made her hungry, and she could never say why.

Donna doesn’t wear perfume. Neither does Maddy.

“I - guess,” she says. Then adds: “Did you?”

One of Maddy’s hands is hovering in the air, like it - she - can’t decide where to land. Then it comes down softly on Donna’s forearm, right next to her left breast. “I didn’t, then,” she says. She sounds breathless. “But - maybe I want to - now.” Her hand stays where it is. She doesn’t move it, doesn’t tighten her grip. Donna could move away, if she wanted. Maddy wouldn’t mind. The contract of it all is unfurled before her: she could shift further to the far side of the bed, say nothing, and this whole afternoon would quietly fade into the ether like a dream. She could. She _should_.

She puts her hand over Maddy’s. “Yeah?”

Maddy doesn’t wear perfume, so she smells like soap instead: plain old Ivory soap, the same kind Donna uses at home. If Donna kept her eyes half-open, let things go blurry, she could maybe make believe that they were in Laura’s old room, that she could smell Sweet Honesty, that the hair beside hers’ on the pillow is blonde instead of brown. She could have what she wanted, just a little. And hasn’t she spent enough time being good and careful and sweet? Doesn’t she _deserve_ what she wants?

“The door,” she says, “it’s locked, right?” As she says it, she slides one bare ankle slowly over Maddy’s, hooking their legs close together. Nothing they couldn’t disentangle from quickly, if Leland or Sarah came in; but something undeniable between them, a deliberate gesture.

Maddy’s voice is low, husky. “Yeah.”

And it’s not so much effort to roll over on top of Maddy, to kiss her - she remembers kissing from Mike, how to open her mouth and lick and grunt to make sure Maddy knows she’s having a good time - to put her hands under Maddy’s sweater and feel the curves of her ribcage. To bite on her neck lightly, making Maddy squeal - “be careful, I’ll bruise!” - and lay kisses down across her shoulders and collarbone. To give Maddy what she wants, if only in name - because if Maddy knew what was on her mind, she’d never want this, no one would - and to get what she wants in return. Just this once, she gets what she wants.

* * *

“You’re a terrible liar,” Laura told her once, and Laura would know: Laura lied to everybody. Donna’s starting to understand why. Laura’s lies made people happy. Bobby believed she loved him; so did James. Probably there were others Donna doesn’t know about. With all that in mind, she struggles to understand why Laura couldn’t lie to _her_ \- why, if she knew how Donna felt (and she must have; Donna was, after all, a terrible liar) she couldn’t have made that one little concession to make her happy.

So she lies to Maddy, and she feels guilty, but maybe she shouldn’t - not after she spent so long desperately wanting Laura to lie to her in the same way, to tell her whatever she wanted to hear so long as it means it makes Donna happy as well. And it does, kind of. Sure, she’s queasy and grinding her teeth, but that’s the price of lies: she has to feel at least a little bit guilty, or she wouldn’t be _her_. Maybe she’s better than Laura, at least in this respect. She can make everyone happy, including herself.

(Mostly.)


End file.
